LETTER. FR.OM ENGLAND !ð ., .- t:- 'f "'. .' · I I 4 " , .. '. I - , . -' \ ': .:.:.... " (.,( f : þ AUGUST 8 (BY CABLE) E AST ANGLIA, that agricultural and maritime section of England which bulges out into the North Sea, is famous for its heron- and duck- haunted Broads, its herring, its fine church architecture, and in peacetime its succulent black Suffolk hams. (It is also famous nowadays, in an uncom- fortable sort of way, for its air raids, because while German planes drop bombs sporadically on other parts of England, it is an exceptional week when the presence of raiders 0 vel the east coast isn't announced in at least one official com- muniqué.) As anybody who has ever been in this part of the country is sure to remember, its straggling hamlets, set in the midst of enormous flat fields of barley ruffled by a perpetual salty wind coming in off the sea, look a bit lonely. One stretch of East Anglia has just become lonelier than anywhere else in England. By order of the War Office, two entire villages and their surround- ing farmsteads have been evacuated for the duration to make way for a battle school. The understandable official view was that it would be undesirable to have live ammunition from the school flying around among civilians, so about a hundred and seventy families were given their notice to leave within a month. Apparently the first intimation most housewives got that something was wrong was when they looked up from their stoves and noticed a gen tle- man from the War Office coming up the path with his briefcase. Since this angel with the flaming sword as a Civil Servant, lacking the red-tab trim- mings of military authority, the residents of one of the villages be,eame suspi- cious that the whole thing was some sort of a Fifth Column hoax, but a mass meeting at the village hall next day, with the vicar in the chair, convinced them that it was only too genuine. Sud- denly the cottagers, the few little shop- keepers, the widow at the pub, and the lady at the manor all found themselves in a situation familiar to many a sad rural community in Europe, except that instead of trudging away from an al- ready burning village they faced the strange necessity of stepping out and leaving a home with a freshly thatched roof and the peas coming up lovely in" the garden. East Anglian families are big and clannish and seldom move away to the cItIes, and to them the War Office ultImatum to get out was as devas- tating a bombshell as any which the young recruits in the battle school will be expected to handle. Happily, a good deal of the resentment worked itself off on some London journalists who wrote harrowing pieces about weeping villagers being carried bodily out of rose- wreathed cottages and having their fin- gers practically pried loose from their porches by the military. The villagers in question, en- raged by these accounts, insist- ed that if they were going to lose their homes they should at least be given credit for mak- ing the best of a bad situation. They have been promised that they will all be allowed to come back after the war, but some of the older peo- ple whose sons have eXplained to them about drill in house-to-house fighting seem dubious of finding their cottages all in one piece, despite the Army's sym- pathetic promise to try and avoid knock- ing them about. T HE fine old churches of the neigh- borhood have been sandbagged, everything antique and valuable in them has been carted off to safety, and what is left gives the impression that Henry the Eighth has once more been on a marauding ramble. In one, the. altar and pulpit are missing and the hatch- ments over the tombs of some of the gentry are just visible above a wall of protective scaffolding. It reminds one of the jingle that babies act out on their fingers and thumbs-here's the church and here's the steeple, all right, but you can't open the doors to let in the people because everyone but the dead, bleakly watching from the windy churchyard, is gone. With no souls to cure, the vic- ar will soon be gone, too, although his house stands outside the commandeered area. Moving one family is usually a suf- ficiently unnerving process. Moving a hundred and seventy families, selling their livestock, and finding them new accommodations within a pretty short time is a headache which largely de- vol ved on the hardworking ladies of the Women's Voluntary Services. Their jobs have varied from moving timid old girls, complete with cats, canaries, and precious jars of home-pickled onions, to taking on the milk route of a dairy farm- er who had departed precipitously, leav- ing his cows to be milked by a neighbor. Farmers, incidentally, have been told 35 ,. Where epicures go! tf:. Ask Lucius Beebe ! \ 'I II JI t'\ \N. C fl o IN E . :" ':::,.,:::; :1 . U :;:::;: : ;.. .. .>.: :m:::':"1 t<\ ::.:;: Wo" ...:Vh:'":::r .::::;. :'. Famed columnist, Lucius Beebe, now helps you decide "\Vhere to Dine." Be an epicure, a gourmet, a syb. arite, merely by going to the right places. W rite Lucius Beebe for particulars. He'll ans\ver in a personally signed letter. Address Lucius Beebe, Room 2452, 120 Broadway, N" ew York City. .":--..,;*^ ._-.; . :;f.;;!.Æ }:::: ?;..::... . ..::::: . {%::i;;1,:i .x...:. 'I';; . ", ...... .:.:.".:--.:-:::...:;: * :' Enjoy this ;r:!f aúle ' i:? , f (, . .:;( ff. . *.;..,,;.... . : .-.: t:? ( " . ".... >, .' . < ' . : lf, ,..,...- <. .. . ::: Pronounced by California's Premier Wine-Makers a Brandy of subtle flavor f1'.." . ::". .. / ,../" .,.:,. J::':; '_' ^ MERICANS have long looked fi. for California to produce a brandy reminiscent of fine Cognac. Such a brandy is now here. 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